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Charles Titan
Charles Titan, born Edward Tamaron, was the fourth host of his Earth-Alpha counterpart, also named Edward Tamaron. Born on Earth-20181, he lacked the talent for magic that his counterpart had, and thus was relatively easy to possess; Tamaron took over his body out of vanity, wanting his original body back after it had been destroyed by Ska years earlier. Using this body, and deceiving his followers into believing that he was Cyrus Sincodemius, Titan commenced a number of occult happenings in the Boston area, including the infamous Cyaegha Wars, eventually leading an army of zombies against his primary arch-foes, the Boston Group. During the command of this army, Titan contacted Ythogtha, an ancient demon, whose power was the driving force reanimating the zombies, and attempted to seize Ythogtha's power for himself. In doing so, the demon was angered, and incinerated Titan's body, before it itself was defeated by the Boston Group. Biography Arriving on Earth Before being trapped on Earth-20181, Tamaron had been locked in combat with his enemy, the Prince of Space, in Earth-Alpha's year 2070. The battle had triggered a fuschium eruption that had destroyed Tamaron's spaceship and opened an interdimensional wormhole. Tamaron's disembodied spirit had plunged into the wormhole, alongside the shielded Prince of Space; they were dragged into Universe-20181, two centuries in the past. The Tamaron Entity was crippled by the shock of his death, but was still aware of certain events occurring; he witnessed the Prince's death at the hands of the Virginia Slasher, a figure whose presence drastically altered the timeline of Earth-20181 away from that of Earth-Alpha. Serial killers, including the Bow Hunter Killer and the Loch Ness Cultist, alongside violence in general, became prominent features in this Earth's history due to the tremendous amounts of murders committed by the Slasher. The horror of the Slasher's many killings created altered sensibilities in the people of this Earth. Tamaron remained stranded in bodiless form for nearly fifty years, from 1870 to 1915. Only his bloodthirsty hunger for ruling the Multiverse kept him alive and decently sane through these long decades. During this time, he began to go through psychological withdrawal from sun-piece, a drug he had been addicted to in previous hosts. It was around 1910 that he broke this addiction, causing him to become slightly more sane and pick up the potential for patience, something he had lacked in previous bodies. It was in this year that he regained mobility, and began to slowly travel the Eastern seaboard in search of a body that could sustain his increasingly-powerful magical presence. It is implied that he attempted to take over several people in the course of his journey, but was horrified to discover that they were unable to sustain the space-warping power of his astral form, and were “destroyed” in some way. Thanks to these efforts, many legends of demonic possession and hauntings spread during this time. In 1915, Tamaron was shocked to encounter the Earth-20181 version of himself. Earth-20181's Edward Tamaron was an untalented sorcerer (having lacked the leadership and teachings of Cyrus Sincodemius), and often enjoyed too many mortal pleasures (he had accidentally sired a son, whose own son would become hugely important later on for Tamaron), but his contact with the “other side” made him ripe for possession by Tamaron. Tamaron took him over greedily, having wanted the return of his body ever since he lost it more than a century ago. (By this point, the Tamaron Entity was roughly two hundred and twenty five years old, but had lived in his original body for almost exactly half that time.) Upon his incarnation in the young man, he naturally reverted to his own original name, and quickly made sure to sever almost all of his host's connections, retreating into the euphoria of having his old form back. Return to the Order Between his retaking of the name and form of Edward Tamaron and the year 1917, Tamaron came to a number of realizations. The first was that his body, never having come in contact with the King of Time, was no longer immortal and thus could grow fat and old. Nevertheless, he enjoyed bodily passions that he had almost forgotten in his forty-plus years of existing as a pure spirit, though he made sure to stay away from drugs so as to prevent his insanity from returning. The second realization was more a revelation; he discovered that the name Jadran Merkhaddo existed in this form of Boston as well. He remembered that his former Master, Cyrus Sincodemius, who had been “Merkhaddo”, was not from Earth-Alpha and thus this was likely his homeworld. Sincodemius, or Merkhaddo, thus would have been missing for almost twenty years, assuming that the timelines of the two worlds were roughly synchronized. He deduced that Merkhaddo would likely be the Master of this world's Order of Draco as well. Heading to the approximate address of the House of Draco, he discovered that this was in fact the case; a man named Graham answered the door, and instantly bowed before Tamaron. He recognized the young man as matching the appearance of the boy whom his Master had been interested in possessing. He explained breathlessly that Sincodemius had traveled to Earth-Alpha to perform the takeover, but had not returned for seventeen years; now he must have come back, to regain control over the Order. Tamaron was pleased that his deductions were correct. He realized that Sincodemius must have been unaware of the version of Tamaron on this Earth, and therefore the Order had never encountered him. They would not suspect that Sincodemius was in fact trapped on Earth-13151518, within the form of a tree. He proclaimed himself to be Sincodemius, and then set about performing the same charade he had years earlier, when he was in a similar situation in his original body. He discovered certain important details about Earth-20181's Order of Draco; here, the Order was much ''larger, having been much older, containing in fact several hundred members in various branches. Additionally, supernatural creatures lived amongst the ranks of the cult. Graham himself was a star vampire, a slave taken from an astral adventure into another dimension by Sincodemius. Both of these factors made the Order much more powerful than Earth-Alpha's, and Tamaron began to scheme to use it to take over the Earth. Disgrace Around 1918, Tamaron—using his natural name—began to publish a number of papers on the occult, intended to snare new recruits to continue building his army. Many of the tactics he used to subtly convince people to join him he had learned as James Marvel, running the Salawan Order of Draco on Earth-Alpha. As the Order grew, so too did Tamaron's arrogance; but he underestimated and had forgotten the prudishness of the early 20th Century, and so he gained more controversy than he would have liked. When he ordered the assassinations of key critics who had attacked the Order, word got out and the Order plunged into scandal. In 1919, to escape the entanglement of the scandal quickly, Tamaron faked his own death, circulating that the sorcerer had been gunned down by the law. Using similar tactics as he had during the late 20th Century on Earth-Alpha, he made the Order a more quiet and mythical presence; in his day to day life, he wore makeup, and pretended to be a mild-mannered scholar named “Charles Titan”. He made the name from both the then-common first name of the day, and from the moon from which he had had prosperity as Krankor. He only cared that he possessed the body of Edward Tamaron; the name he could keep to himself, with “Titan” being only a necessary alias. Only some, such as a man named Ousmane, suspected that Tamaron and Titan were one-and-same. In an attempt to escape the auspices of those suspicious of him, Tamaron spent more and more time in Hershey, Pennsylvania, while still running the House of Draco in Boston. The size of the Earth-20181 Order allowed him to perform more occult research than was originally possible for him; and so it was that he learned of his Master's original plan for immortality involving the release of Cyaegha. In essence, Sincodemius had offered to free Cyaegha in return for eternal life; he had already been given an extended lifespan so as to achieve this goal. Tamaron realized, not learning from his past mistakes involving entities like Ska, that he could perhaps masquerade as Sincodemius, free Cyaegha, and thus gain true immortality in a total duplicate of his original body. The offer was too tempting for him to pass up. For two years, he began to plan on how to attain the proper number of human sacrifices necessary to formulate the ritual that would release Cyaegha. The Cyaegha Wars In 1921, the team of adventurers known as the Boston Group became active. Consisting at first of reporter Clayton Stone, billionaire Snaps McGee, janitor Potato Spezito, real estate manager Josh Inn, and gangster Gregory O'Grady, the group went on several adventures before coming into contact with Tamaron, including a case at an old house and trips to Antarctica and Australia; the Antarctica mission saw the death of Potato, though he was replaced by an ancient and deformed whaler and pilot named Welshie. Late in the year, they returned from Australia, having all received a sizable bounty for helping ranchers in the Outback slay a group of bunyips; they enjoyed a brief retirement, which lasted until the weeks before the end of the year. It was New Year's Eve that Titan had chosen as his time to strike. A number of murders began to take place around Boston. These murders, committed by the Order of Draco, were actually sacrifices meant to build up a workable energy for the release of Cyaegha. The two hundred murders needed to be completed by the cult would have to be committed before a final release ritual on or before New Year's. An old cemetery in a lowly part of Boston was selected to serve as a disposal area for some of the sacrifices. Unfortunately for the Order, the cemetery was located behind a house that served as the headquarters for the O'Grady Mob. Gregory O'Grady noticed the strangely garbed figures moving around in the cemetery and discretely dispatched some of his mobsters to guard that end of the house; acting independently, a squad of cultists murdered the gang members. When O'Grady found out, he was outraged, and called over the Boston Group to begin investigating. Slowly but surely, the Group began to learn of the Order's plans; ironically, they were aided by a memory Snaps McGee had of Tamaron's former Master, Cyrus Sincodemius, who had explained the nature of Cyaegha to Snaps' father Sneedgrass in 1900, when Snaps was a small boy. (Sincodemius, under the guise of “Old Cyrus”, had been swindling Sneedgrass for money for years before the latter died in 1921—it was Sneedgrass' last wishes that sent the Boston Group to the old house in their first adventure.) Tamaron was made aware of the existence of the Group, and he ordered them to continue as planned, using the Group as sacrifices if necessary. The Order began to threaten several organizations, warning them arrogantly of their plans to invade their facilities and murder all within. In part, this was a gesture made by Tamaron to taunt the Boston Group, wanting to kill them before they became a true menace. He was unaware at the time that he would not finish off the Group until around 1992. The first site targeted was the Massachusetts State Prison, whose prisoners they planned to make into sacrifices, along with all the staff. They were unaware that just a few days earlier, Snaps McGee had purchased the Prison and privatized it, as part of an attempt to free Welshie after he randomly murdered an old man in a park. Therefore, the Boston Group was already inside the facility when Tamaron led his assault. Tamaron decided to spare no expense on his threats; more than a hundred members of the Order of Draco assaulted the fortress-like prison, even bringing World War I era tank (a Liberty) with them. The Group was outmaneuvered and outgunned, even with the Boston Police Force on their side; but quick thinking on the behalves of Welshie and Clayton Stone disabled the tank. Gregory O'Grady, Snaps McGee, and Josh Inn managed to stir up a prison riot, turning the would-be victims into an army that slaughtered and routed the cultists. Yet Tamaron was prepared for this contingency. He had already had the entire Order make themselves into sacrifices, meaning that their deaths counted towards the release of Cyaegha. The Order struck again at Boston Meats, the biggest meatpacking plant in the country at that time, where dozens of workers were locked in doing overtime. The Boston Group stymied them again, having received a tip-off of the threat from the plant's owner. The assault this time was much smaller, thus somewhat delaying Tamaron's plans; but it also meant fewer losses for the Order. After the battle, Snaps McGee bought the plant, releasing its workers from sweatshop torment. The two battles caused Tamaron to pause and briefly reconsider his strategy. Falling back on one of his old weaknesses, he began to lose track of his task at hand to pursue the goal of vengeance. Two weeks passed, and as New Year's approached, Tamaron sent Order members to spy on the Boston Group's members—who mostly now gathered at McGee Manor. He discovered that the Group was under the impression that the Cyaegha plot had been foiled, and that the battle was over. In celebration, they planned to go aboard one of McGee's party boats, the [[''SS Sneedgrass]]. The Order was dispatched to raid the ship and kill all those aboard. This time, the Group was in fact somewhat unprepared; Snaps knew that one of his father's rivals, Felix Gros II, was a guest aboard the ship with his daughter Marie. He had thus set up a plan to convince Marie to marry him, so he could kill both her and her father to gain the latter's sizable billions. He had had Welshie push the elder Gros off the side of the ship to his death and proposed to the weeping Marie. She accepted, but moments later, the cultists of the Order struck. Seeing the not-so-tender scene from afar, the cultists tried to kill Marie (even as Snaps blamed the murder of Felix Gros on them), but she was saved by Snaps. The O'Grady Mob suddenly appeared, having also been guests aboard the ship—and they quickly took out the cultists with their Tommy guns. The battle was able to sink the SS Sneedgrass, an event reported in the news, along with Snaps McGee's wedding announcement. Tamaron, embittered by failure, took upon this as another opportunity for an attack. He located the church where the pair were to be married and prepared to strike; but instead of sending more valuable Order members, he instead summoned a creature native to this universe called the Slippery Thing, which he had discovered in an old grimoire belonging to Sincodemius. The wedding was done quickly, out of McGee's greed for the Gros family millions; and when it happened, the Thing attacked. The Slippery Thing, though unintelligent and somewhat weak, was still capable of subsuming the wedding guests into its mass, and proved to ultimately be too gelatinous to injure. The assembled Boston Group was forced to flee the church, sealing the creature in the basement. By 1992, when he appeared in the form of Hippolyte Jason, Tamaron was aware the creature was still trapped in the basement, forming an urban legend for local Bostonian teenagers. There was one last threat dealt out by the Order—the Miskatonic Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Tamaron decided to improve his chances by combining a summoned creature with his cultists. To this effect, he called up a lesser monster known as a Dhole to burrow under the Asylum to ambush the Group. Ultimately, the entire attack was coordinated to be one large ambush; but during this time, the Group investigated the Asylum for the best way to hold off such an assault. It was during this investigation that Welshie ended up finding a mysterious ghost, who would eventually contribute to Tamaron's downfall as Titan. The attack went as planned, but with the help of Clayton Stone piloting one of Welshie's planes, the Dhole was slain along with the cultists. The Group left one of them alive, and began to torture him. The severe devastation inflicted on the Order by the battles had left this member's loyalties shaken; he confessed that with the killings committed here, the ritual could be completed, using artifacts from the Boston Museum of Natural History, being infiltrated presently. The Group rushed to the Museum, where Titan himself was leading the final release ritual. A fight ensued between the remaining cultists and the Group. Many of them were gunned down by Tommy gun fire, but Titan carried on the ritual, driven by his burning desire to acquire eternal life. Yet during the struggle, at the pinnacle moment of the ritual—Josh Inn knocked over the altar, disrupting the synapse required to release Cyaegha. The power of the sacrifices was destroyed, rendering the entire affair worthless. Titan ran into the night, swearing revenge on all the members of the Boston Group. He no longer cared about Cyaegha—he only was interested in killing the members by any means necessary. In the end, most of the human members of the Order of Draco were dead. Some did remain, but a number of these fled. The ones that remained were chiefly vampires, and included Graham. Under Graham's supervision, the loss of the Cyaegha Wars would be avenged. The Battle of Barbados Following the end of the Wars, the Boston Group took another break from adventuring. The Order of Draco continued to spy on their activities, but began to consider that they had retired for good. Titan was impatient and considered simply murdering the Group in their homes. But at the same time, he had faced so many of his foes in battle that he only though it just to engage his enemies in a fair fight. Therefore, he knew he would have to manufacture an event that would cause them to come out of “hiding”. He decided to investigate entities native to this universe to summon, so that he could in essence replicate the Cyaegha Wars. He almost arbitrarily decided, after perusing Sincodemius' books once more, to try to contact a child of Cyaegha, known as Ythogtha. Ythogtha was a worm-like creature that could spawn smaller worms that had powers over the dead. From a longevity standpoint, Titan cared little for the entity itself, but he knew that it was a being that would be considered “evil”; and so the Boston Group would try to prevent its entry into the mortal world. He ordered several of the female members of the Order to head to the island of Barbados, in the guise of witches, where they would begin a false attempt to free Ythogtha. To commence the “case”, a knife, which was in fact critical to the Ythogtha ritual, would have to be stolen from the Boston Museum. The theft was committed as planned, but because the Cyaegha ritual had taken place there not so long ago, the Museum was locked down by the FBI. When the Boston Group decided to investigate, they were labeled as the thieves by the Bureau. In trying to escape from the ensuing gunfight, Welshie shot down two Federal agents. The Boston Group was put on a fugitive list, but they decided to ignore such a thing to continue to investigate the theft. Titan was caught unawares by this turn of events, and decided to use it to his advantage. A member of the Order infiltrated the FBI and stepped up the investigation of the Group. The Bureau prepared to move in to seize McGee Manor and all other known property of the Group in an attempt to hold them hostage. However, the Director of the FBI was persuaded by the higher-ups to do this to try to recruit the Group into FBI work, to stop them from killing random civilians in their battles. This information never properly reached Titan until later. According to plan, the Boston Group learned that the dagger had been taken to Barbados (having actually been stolen from an exhibit on Barbados). They traveled there and began to search for signs of the witches that had stolen it, being joined by an elderly lady named Ursula. Eventually they discovered that the witches were practicing in the jungle and had summoned a nigh-indestructible creature (nicknamed the “Red Beastie”) as a guardian. The Group was escorted to their jungle altar by a man named Romando; along the way, they found an old cave that housed a man in suspended animation. His name was Roblair Makepeace, and he had nearly died fighting the Red Beastie when it had been summoned eighty years prior on Barbados by Cyrus Sincodemius. Titan discovered Roblair's presence via scrying, and saw that he had nearly been able to kill the Red Beastie the first time the two had fought, using very powerful magic. He ordered the witches to try to strike him down first, before killing the Group; had he simply ordered the death of the Group at all costs, they would have likely died, with Roblair being easy to neutralize later. With Romando and Roblair at their side, the Boston Group easily reached the altar where the phony Ythogtha ritual was taking place. However, the witches were somehow caught unaware, and Welshie silently crept up on them and killed two of their number with a grenade. The remaining one shape-shifted into a gorilla, and a number of Order cultists, alongside the Red Beastie, appeared out of the woods. The fight was on. Roblair and the Red Beastie began to battle as the others tried to take down the cultists and the gorilla-witch. By this point in time, one of the members, Clayton Stone, had been steadily going insane, but it was in his madness that he came up with a desperate plan. Using the power of a Dimensional Shambler that the Group had enslaved, he teleported back to Welshie's plane, losing a chunk of his hand in the process due to the destructive effects of the portal. Despite having no flying experience in his life, he managed to take off and started heading to the altar. During this time, Roblair was beaten down by the Red Beastie and then torn in half at the waist. It was his sacrifice that drew off enough time for Stone to arrive. He kamikazed the plane into the altar, destroying it and severing the link from the far side to the Red Beastie. No longer under the control of the Order, the Beastie began to fight on instinct, but was driven off by a Tommy gun fired by Ursula that Roblair had enchanted with holy power before his death. The witch disguised as a gorilla was killed by a shotgun blast from Snaps McGee. The Ythogtha ritual had been ruined, and the Order of Draco's presence on Barbados had been shut down. However, the Boston Group suffered two casualties; Roblair had died, but Clayton Stone had also parachuted free from the plane before it destroyed the altar. Yet in his insanity, he had attempted to charge the Red Beastie with a grenade, which went off in his hand. Only his skull remained, which Snaps McGee recovered as a remembrance of the dead man. The Black Ship When Titan saw that only a small part of the Boston Group had perished, he was furious. He decided to make an even more direct action. Knowing from his scrying that the Group wanted to stay on Barbados a little while longer, he ordered Graham and his army of vampires, which included Graham's second in command Sayid, to go steal a large ironclad vessel. This ship would serve as a floating fortress that would intercept the Boston Group's returning boat. The Group would be taken prisoner aboard the ship to await Tamaron's arrival, so he could slay them personally. The Group left Barbados on schedule, just as what Graham called the Black Ship arrived to intercept them. Along the way they also captured a stowaway named Thomas J. Carlson, who had been cavorting with the Group already aboard the ship, helping Welshie assassinate the ship's captain. The guests aboard the Group's ship, like the original crew of the Black Ship, were turned into vampires under Graham's control. The Group was imprisoned in the makeshift brig of the Black Ship. Unable to control their bloodlust, some of the new vampires murdered Romando and Ursula. Tamaron prepared to take a small boat out to the ship to greet his foes. But once more, he underestimated the Group. They orchestrated a prison break with the help of a traitorous vampire named Malcolm Oscar Malloy, and rampaged across the ship. Welshie and Thomas Carlson sabotaged the Black Ship's boiler, which exploded, causing the Ship to start to sink. As it was sinking, Graham confronted the Group, trying to prevent them from reaching the lifeboats. Carlson used a Tommy gun to blow out parts of the ship's ceiling, revealing sunlight, which burned off Graham's face. The ancient vampire turned to smoke and flew away, screaming in pain. The remains of his face left ashes on the ground, which were eaten by Thomas J. Carlson; this transformed him'' ''into a half-vampire. He would not be the only one to undergo spiritual transformation on that day either, as Snaps McGee stole an important book from the ship during the battle. The Group escaped in the lifeboats, unconsciously passing Tamaron as they returned home. When he realized he had been defeated once more, he was driven to an even more extreme measures; but before acting, he decided to allow the FBI to have their way with the Boston Group They had already seized McGee Manor and a hotel that Gregory O'Grady had started using as a Mob base, called the Pride o' the Irish. Yet in the ensuing conflict between the two groups, the Boston Group was merely made into a squad of FBI agents, with their property restored. What was more, during the battle with the FBI, Graham and his vampires had attacked without Tamaron's permission. Though Josh Inn perished during the conflict (with the strange appearance of a man and a woman in odd clothes), Graham was staked through the heart, destroying him. (It is of note that Josh Inn was replaced with another man, Doctor Clancy Clementine, whose “double-C” name reminded Tamaron of certain Order members from the past.) With the failure of all of these plans, and the loss of most of the Order of Draco, Tamaron decided to genuinely summon Ythogtha. The next few weeks were dedicated to the lengthy ritual of calling upon the ancient entity. Tamaron would later reflect on the absurdity of his plan: he wanted to use his magic to steal Ythogtha's power, and gained control over death on Earth. Ythogtha Ascendant Deciding to avoid Boston for some time, Titan worked out of his other house in Hershey, working the ritual to summon Ythogtha. Eventually, he was successful—at least partially. Using the Pearls of Ythogtha, he actually opened a portal between Earth and Hell, where Ythogtha was chained. This allowed the deity to begin to influence things on Earth, including the raising of the dead. Tamaron communicated with the creature, learning many new things about magic in the process. During this communication, he discovered that Ythogtha actually could raise the dead based on “thermodynamic emotional systems”; that is to say, using interpersonal human connections, it could summon the reanimated bodies of lost friends and family within certain groups. It only needed an “artifact” to begin the ritual that could do such a thing. To this effect, Tamaron sent a squad of surviving vampires to breach the vault beneath McGee Manor where he stored Clayton Stone's skull. Along the way, he also discovered a secret freezer unit, where McGee had preserved the corpses of many of those killed in battle, including dead members of the O'Grady Mob, and cultists from the Order of Draco. These bodies were stolen, to be the first Ythogtha drones. Using the skull, Ythogtha began to raise the dead to attack the Boston Group, using his spawn, which infested the corpses. The Order of Draco returned as an army of undead, and the O'Grady Mob's deceased turned against their boss. Romando, Roblair, Ursula, Potato, and others also all came back, their personalities intact, but readjusted to nurse a deep hatred for the Group. This allowed the zombies to mock their targets and perhaps come closer to killing them; but it had its faults. During a battle with a gang of reanimated cultists, Gregory O'Grady found a zombie form of the cultist whom the Group had tortured at the Mental Asylum during the Cyaegha Wars; the zombie had memories of being tortured, and so he surrendered, both literally and information-wise. He revealed that the cause of the zombies was in Hershey, Pennsylvania, shortly before Titan vaporized him from afar. Realizing that the Group could possibly arrive before he was done absorbing Ythogtha's power—which he was already doing, bit by bit—Titan took command of the Red Beastie, forcing it to wreck the Group's plane and tank. They would have to travel by car to reach Hershey, which would give Titan a handful of days that would be necessary to finish stealing Ythogtha's energies. The zombie hordes would slow down the Group much more as well; and the route had had a detour set up, where the last dozen or so members of the Order of Draco had constructed a false town to lure in and perhaps slay the Group. The Group ended up dueling the Red Beastie, which was killed in battle by the zombie form of Roblair. The battle cost Welshie his right hand, but he replaced it with his trademark harpoon gun. The plane was wrecked as planned, but the Group did managed to find a truck, and began their journey to Pennsylvania. In the course of the trip, they wiped out the Ythogtha zombies and also destroyed the false town set up by the Order, killing all those who had built it. Titan sensed this and suddenly realized the Order of Draco had been destroyed; it was now or nothing. He would have to steal Ythogtha's power if he was ever to dominate the Earth, achieve immortality, and hang onto the closest thing he had to his original body. Ythogtha was starting to become suspicious, having sensed the loss of its power, but it allowed Tamaron to continue his plan, believing that he was the key to its release. Eventually, the Group reached Hershey, where they encountered Ousmane, who had suspected Tamaron of being more than what met the eye for years. Ousmane tried to warn the Group (having heard of their exploits), but they killed him instead. Fortunately for them, Thomas Carlson used his vampire abilities to restore Ousmane—or, rather, his severed head—to life as a ghoul. Ousmane then relayed the true nature of Charles Titan to them, as well as the location of his house in Hershey. The Group went there, and the two met face to face for what would turn out to be the last time. Titan realized that his “amateur magician” disguise would not work on the Group, so he instead fled from them, using one of the Ythogtha Pearls to escape to Hell. Using some of the power he had stolen from Ythogtha, he also raised a trio of zombies that he enhanced with an unknown energy, to turn them into hulking brutes. The zombies managed to destroy much of the house before they were stopped by the Group. The destruction of the house resulted in the loss of a number of clues that could have aided the Group in tracking down the other Pearl, which was the only way to enter Hell and confront Ythogtha. He was unaware that Ousmane had in his possession another Pearl, and that the Group simply needed to rest and stock up before they could pursue him. However, Titan would never get a chance to personally battle the Boston Group. When he arrived in Hell, Ythogtha revealed that it had noticed Titan stealing his power. Though it was glad that it finally had regained access to Earth, it considered Titan to be a threat to its dominance. With a blast of raw thermal energy, Charles Titan's body was disintegrated. Unbeknownst to Ythogtha, the Tamaron Entity survived, bodiless, in Hell. He was horrified by the loss of his original body for a second time, and he was considered attempting to make Ythogtha into a host, when the Boston Group arrived. Seeing Ythogtha, they attempted to destroy the creature, but were all slain by the same thermal rays that had killed Titan. Titan was glad to see his hated enemies perish, even if it was not by his hand. He was so caught up in his gloating over their destruction that he barely noticed that the unknown ghost they had found in the Insane Asylum had arrived. This “ghost” then proved itself to be a vastly powerful entity. It shelved some of Ythogtha's power while restoring the entire group to life—how it accomplished this remains unknown. The Group, facing a much weaker Ythogtha, managed to slay the god-like being, mortifying Titan, but also creating a pulse of energy which took everyone back to Earth, including the disembodied spirits. The unknown ghost faded away, leaving only a confused and enraged Tamaron. The Boston Group returned to their hometown and went on another mission up north in Maine, where Snaps McGee met his death and the Group became nationally maligned for their uncontrolled murders, pushing them into a true retirement. It was during this mission that Titan, remaining bodiless, began to probe the minds of the world to find a body that could support his presence. He did in fact find one, in a young occultist, across the ocean in Germany, whose magical aura was so strong that it was flowing back in time. Tamaron began a steady crawl across the sea to possess this man at the “peak” of his magical career; one that would take a slow five years. Personality and Traits Spending nearly fifty years in a bodiless form, going through sun-piece withdrawal, caused Tamaron in his form as Charles Titan to reconsider his tactical outlook, as well as his personal reserves of patience. He did indulge himself on a mortal, physical scale upon regaining a body, but tried to avoid slipping back into drug addiction. It was as Titan that he realized that a tactical outlook on life would serve him better than applying crude brute force to his problems. Nevertheless, he was unable to let go of his anger and hatred for those who crossed him. Once the Boston Group started battling him, he put aside his dreams of power and immortality to attempt to destroy them. This vendetta outlived Titan's body, and he continued it up until he believed the entire Group had either been killed by him or by old age. Still, he acted with a certain degree of coolness that he had lost during his time as Krankor, and he tried to keep it up and enhance it for his remaining lives until he lost it entirely. Tamaron considered Titan to be the chess-player of his existence, moving around the massive Order of Draco like pieces on the board. He was not afraid to make sacrifices, but this fear was more a sort of arrogance, as he was basically responsible for the Order's annihilation at the hands of the Boston Group. His patience also did cause him to improperly weigh the importance of certain targets; if he had murdered Ousmane, he could have prevented the Group from acquiring the Ythogtha Pearl, and he could have perhaps managed to store up enough power to take on Ythogtha as a host over the long term. The acting skills Tamaron had picked up in his original form were duplicated by Titan; after the scandal that took away his social standing, he faked his death and pretended to be a harmless crank. However, there must have been some flaws in his acting, given that men such as Ousmane sensed that he was actually much more powerful than he let on. Indeed, Tamaron was stronger than ever as Titan, being able to summon lesser monsters with relative ease, maintain control over them, and even challenge the authority of beings like Ythogtha, whom he also manipulated. He would find that the power he stole from Ythogtha was somehow subsumed into the fabric of his astral self, allowing him to have certain powers over the dead that he demonstrated on and off a couple of times later. On a quirkier level, he was also fond of clothing his vampires, zombies, and ghouls in pinstripe suits for certain reasons, which remained unclear even to himself. Trivia * All of the names of Tamaron's hosts are references, but the reference intended here is expressed in the text itself; Titan is “named” for the moon of Saturn that was so important to his previous host, Krankor. * Charles Titan, along with Karl Gerber, represents the part of Tamaron's life based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Cyaegha and Ythogtha are both creatures (“Great Old Ones”) from the Mythos, first appearing in Eddy Bertin's “Darkness, My Name Is” (1976) and Lin Carter's Xothic legend cycle (1971-1981), respectively. The portion of Hell described during the Ythogtha battle is probably meant to be based on Yuggoth, a prominent planet from the Mythos. * Titan may be based on Wizard Whateley, from Lovecraft's “The Dunwich Horror” (1928). Whateley also seemingly lends his name to Dionysus Whateley. * It is heavily implied that some of the zombies battled on the road to Hershey by the Boston Group were made from the corpses of the Puritan Party. Sources and Appearances * ''The Life of Mocata, Volume II ''(mentioned in subsequent volumes)